An imbalance of “power” is one of the criticisms of RPG’s that utilize a game master. Most table top role playing games have this basic structure. There is one game master and one or more players. The game master decides what the “world” of the game is like. The “world” includes all the people, places and things the characters might interact with. The players each have one character and the player only has “power” over the behaviors of that one character. The game master can, in theory, do anything he wants to those characters.

This criticism assumes that the game has a built in incentive for the game master to abuse that power. This is false. Games have a built in incentive for the game master to not abuse their position. If we want people to play in our games, we have to treat our players well. Many of us have had the experience of playing in a game where the game master is a jerk. The game is not the problem. The jerk is. The solution to that, in my mind, is not to change the game but exclude the jerk.

I want to substitute the word “responsibility” for “power.” The game master has the responsibility to decide what the world of the game is like. They have the responsibility to adjudicate how the world reacts to the decisions the players make in the roles of their characters. That responsibility includes creating or adjudicating the reaction of the world in as consistent a way as possible so that players have agency over their characters. If the game master runs their game responsibly, the asymmetry of information between player and game master is a feature not problem.